Receiveing HDTV OTA (1 Viewer)

[Terry_D]

I'm a newbie to the HDTV community, so please bear with me if my questions are "easy" or common knowledge.

First of all, I live in Bloomington IN, about 50 miles S. of Indianapolis. We get all of the Indy locals on cable, but the cable company (Insight Communications) doesn't seem interested in upgrading our service to include the option for HD. I've got a Hitachi 53UWX10B HD-Ready set (which I love) and I really want to start receiving HD broadcasts OTA. My questions are:

1) What is the typical range that HD broadcasts are available OTA. I have no experience receiving regular UHF broadcasts OTA (use cable), so I can't reference that.

2) What type of antenna is recommended for recieving HD broadcasts from this (50-60 mi.) range?

3) What receiver should I be looking at? (I may get DirecTV sooner or later, so including the capability to recieve that would be good)

Are there any other HTF members from Bloomington who have experience with this? Any information that can be provided would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Terry

 

[Jerry C]

I'm in Evansville and we have the same situation as you regarding cable. That is, there isn't any HD. One local station, the ABC affiliate, is online with their HD programming and I get this OTA very well. I have the Toshiba DST-3000 receiver and am very happy with it for OTA. I don't do satellite.
Check www.antennaweb.org and www.titantv.com to find out what stations you might be able to receive OTA and the type of antenna you need.
Satellite can give you HBO-HD, HD-Net, (both DirecTV) or Showtime-HD (Dish). You won't be able to get locals via satellite, however, without a waiver from the local network affiliate.
Hope this helps.